What's in a word? The time is right for butchering the Bard

Monday 26 November 2012 12:59 BST

National Theatre boss Nicholas Hytner delivered the Directors Guild Peter Brook Lecture yesterday at the British Museum. He spent the afternoon riling Shakespeare purists by saying that on certain occasions it would “be misrepresenting Shakespeare to use the lines he wrote”.

Speaking in front of an audience that included film-maker Mike Leigh and actors Simon Russell Beale and Meera Syal, Hytner explained that because some words now mean the exact opposite of what they would have in the 16th century, he sometimes found it necessary subtly to rewrite the bard’s lines.

It proved a good vocal warm-up for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards that evening, where he attacked arts funding cuts.

Hytner revealed that the most common letters he receives are from audience members complaining about the sound. “They tell me they’ve been going to the National since 1956 and that they could hear the actors perfectly well back then.”